Tricia Redeker Hepner, UT assistant professor of anthropology and board member of the Center for the Study of Social Justice, passionately recounted a passage from her Eritrean monograph, which portrayed a vignette of her time spent with Seyoum, a guerilla fighter with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. 

Hepner's newly published monograph Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora details her work in Eritrea and its United States based diaspora. 

Had I not done this work, I would not be where I am today. Tricia Hepner, assistant professor of anthropology at UT

According to Hepner, the book shows a few key findings: Eritrea is a transnational entity, which has been so since the inception of the nationalist movement; and that transnationalism is limiting, repressive, disabling and prevents as much as it enables. The latter is what she calls the dark-side of transnationalism. 

Hepner concluded that the reality of a diasporic citizenry that has constituted itself into a non-territorialized public sphere is recognized by the state as both necessary for it's continuing sovereignty while at the same time its greatest liability.

Hepner is Chair of the Migration and Refugee Studies Division of the CSSJ. The impetus behind starting the center was learning that many people at the university share lots of common interests, and their work oftentimes are interrelated, but each person was unaware of the connections, according to Hepner. 

"CSSJ has become a clearinghouse for all of us to share our ideas," said Hepner. "We can know what other people in the University are doing, and we can collaborate."

Hepner indicated that her current work builds directly on the findings discovered in her previous fieldwork. 

Hepner is developing a service-learning component to her undergraduate courses through Bridge Refugee Services in Knoxville. This will give undergraduates an opportunity to gain experience, according to Hepner. 

"I'm trying to get people to interact in a local sense with these issues that are of global significance," Hepner said.